.TH POLE 1 "October 20, 2006"
.SH NAME
pole - portable library for structured storage
.SH SYNOPSIS
poledump filename [stream-name [output-file]]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.PP
POLE is a portable C++ library to access structured storage. It is
designed to be compatible with Microsoft structured storage, also
sometimes known as OLE Compound Document.

A structured storage is normally used to store files inside another
file; you can even have complex directory tree inside. It can be
treated as a filesystem inside a file. The most popular use of
structured storage is in Microsoft Office. Structured storage does not
offer compression nor encryption support, hence usually it is used
only for interoperability purposes.

Compared to structured storage routines offered by Microsoft Windows
API, POLE has the advantage that it is portable. You can access any
structured storage in the supported platform, you don't need to rely
on Windows library.
.PP
.SH USAGE
.PP
.SS
.SS POLEdump
.PP
You may use poledump like the example below:
$poledump budget.xls Workbook result.xls
.SS
.SS POLEView. 
.PP
Its purpose is to show the content of a structured storage in a tree
view. It is also possible to view each stream in hexadecimal format
and/or export the stream as well. You can study its source code to get
familiar on how to use POLE API.
.PP
.SH HOMEPAGE
http://pole.berlios.de/
.SH AUTHOR
This manual page was written by Varun Hiremath <varunhiremath@gmail.com>,
for the Debian project (but may be used by others).
